Friday, April 13, 2018

Manager McGraw is evidently going to rely this season, as he always has, on his players slugging the ball, instead of having them follow the sacrifice bunt system.
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He may be right in following this plan, but it seems that by doing the unexpected once in a while and adopting the sacrifice, the Giants would win many more close games.

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Steve Pearce has managed to hang around quite a while. .189 ISO with decent OBP makes for a good 4th OF/backup 1B, even if the defense is meh. Fun list of similars, some guys (Myers, Hermida, Pena) got a lot of buzz coming up through the minors but didn't become the stars that many thought would happen.

Yesterday, Joe Mauer got his 2000th hit. All 2000 have come with the Twins. While he's the only active player to have 2,0000 hits with his current club, plenty of players in baseball history have collected 2000 hits with one franchise. Joe Mauer is the 91st member of the club.

THE QUESTION:
How many of the other 90 can you name? (Yeah, I got a list of them all, in order from most hits down to Mauer).

Steve Pearce has always been one of my favorite players since that was going to be my name right up until a few days before I was born. Mom liked the name Steven so that's what I was going to be until Dad convinced her to change her mind and I ended up being a Jr named after him.

Ichiro! is all-time franchise leader for SEA. Through post #24, you haven't named franchise leaders for the Dodgers, Giants, Phillies, Senators/Twins, Angels, Rangers. One of these is a massive oversight - so massive I wonder if someone named this guy and I missed it. (Fun fact: No one ever had 2000 hits for the A's).

#18: Dodger franchise hit king
#37: NL third baseman. I figured he'd be a piece of cake
#38: NL centerfielder. I believe he was teammates w/ #37
#52: Ichiro! broke a record this guy held for a very long time
#54: This guy played for the same franchise as #52.
#56: 19th century infielder who spent his entire career with one team
#60: All-time Rangers hit king
#74: Another guy from the same team as #52, and #54
#76: Had a nice long career w/ LA but ... yeah, I can see why you'd forget him
#77: 3000 hit guy from recent decades. Really, really should've been mentioned by now.
#78: 19th century outfielder. Cub
#80: One of the most iconic players from the 21st century.
#82: Hall of Fame Cardinal
#87: His glove got him into Cooperstown
#88: Impossible. Cleveland Spider. And not even a memorable one. Wanna know how hard this one is? I'll give you his initials? E.M. See? You still don't know who it is.

#58
Sisler? DING! 2295 w/ STB..... what what other STB can you guys think of? (Er, some might be Washington Senators, actually. I think I ran those two franchises together. --- looks at the list -- yeah, the other 2 guys are Washington Senator. Sisler is the only Brown on the list. Sorry about that.

#56: 19th century Reds second baseman. Elected to the Hall of Fame looooong after his death
#60: All-time Rangers hit king. His entire career is in the 21st century
#74: Another Senator. Base stealing CF. Longtime teammate of Joe Judge
#76: Had a nice long career w/ LA but ... yeah, I can see why you'd forget him. Played there 1960-73. Centerfield. Led the league in triples twice - eight years apart.
#78: 19th century outfielder. Cub from 1885 to 1900. Ended with 118 homers. By the numbers, one of the guys the original VC should've put in Cooperstown, but they didn't - and he never did make it in.
#88: Impossible. Cleveland Spider. And not even a memorable one. Wanna know how hard this one is? I'll give you his initials? E.M. See? You still don't know who it is. First name: Ed.

Funny thing. I had given up and looked at the Dodgers franchise leaderboard, and listed at #2 in hits with 2181 was a guy who fits the forgettable description even better than Davis, Bill Russell. Davis is listed as having 1952. but their player pages say different, 1926 for Russell, 2091 for Davis.

Years and years of membership in a Strat-O-Matic league using their Career Normalized disks helped me out on those. Clyde Milan was a bench outfielder for me for a while - he wasn't much of a hitter in the context of a league with every player in the history of the sport, but he had a great glove and could run.

McKean was a handy bench outfielder/pinch hitter to have around. He wasn't special, but he was a nice spare part.

When I looked this up, I almost forgot about the dormant teams. But I figured you might get Wee Willie Keeler. Nope. Or maybe Jesse Burkett or Cupid Childs. Nope and nope. You get Ed ####### McKean. Ed McKean!

Is anyone finding that the MLB At Bat app is using ridiculous amounts of data this year? I got an alert from my cellphone provider that I was approaching my monthly data limit, so I checked which apps were using the data and At Bat has used 3.5 GB since April 5. I'm not watching/listening to any games through it, I just have the score widget on my home screen and I sometimes check game details in the morning - that's it. What can it possibly be downloading that's that big? It hasn't in previous seasons.